Children between the ages of 2-6 were asked to draw their homes, themselves or their families. Homes resembled homes, and people resembled people but nothing is perfect, yet they all give us an emotion, nostalgia. To what? What is there in the image that allows us all to see something different.

The mind’s prejudice of viewing and its representation were completely disconnected from what we, as depicted and mature subjects seem to perceive. So the question arise, was their perception faulty, or was ours?

Children just are. They exist in a relentless state of infinite possibilities. They are unaware of any scheme and because of so, they are completely present.

Using these drawings as a launching point for a way to analyze our interpretation of form or lack there of along with the innocence and the brutality that brings these seemingly distant associations together.

Irrelevant, banal, futile, disconnected from imagination. Architecture has forced itself to the brink of necessity in an unending urge to fathom inconsequential form. Just as addicts yearn to fulfill a physical dependency; we heighten the dosage, anticipating the initial sublime high.

“Did the cavemen set out to find a two-bedroom cave?”

Jeffrey Kipnis

This freedom of view and discovery because of need is one that architecture lacks in today’s world. A quality that we are born with but as we age, and grow and mature we allow for our rational mind to control our decisions.

Considered as one step into architecture from the previous Rorschach, these selected studies show how children understand our shared world, communicate and analyze it. Form is gone, instead replaced by an idea, color and shape that means something more than a formal exploit. It is a glimpse into their realities.

My research started as a study into the way we perceive, are manipulated, and are capable of delaying the act of seeing. These images are a brief walk-through through those associations and an introduction on how we / I might be able to overcome those limitations.

The below are a series of Rorschach tests created for the purpose of understanding perception, or for a glimpse into what we call perception.

It allowed for a freedom or fracture in the conscious mind that allows form to be displayed innocently, while being perceived prejudicially.

Both color and monochrome experiments were used to understand the nature of readings and memory contaminated perception. The key is allowing the mind to see without being dictated and for objects to be discovered by association through unraveling of personalized memories and thoughts.

“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.”

Socrates

Rorschach, or known as Klecksographs was pioneered by Justinus Kerner, who included Klecksographs in his books of poetry. Since the 1890’s, psychologists have used it as a tool for studying the subconscious, most famously Hermann Rorschach in his Rorschach inkblot test. The looseness of reading, varied associations and freedom from normal conventions, the Rorschach provided a way into the topic of the sense of perception. Each variation allows for a new opportunity of perception.

As adults we impose narratives and tendencies in pursuit of totalizing goals and/or explanations.

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. Defined as the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness”, but it has come to the human tendency to seek patterns in random information in general such with language, graphics, forms and ornamentation.

WHAT COULD THIS BE?

This phrase is what is asked of participants in these tests. The sentence is minimized in order to only indicate that it is a question, invoke your imagination and point towards an object.

Black on black and white on black were used to exploit the tests, and push them and myself to understand the object based creations. Each progressions was made and analyzed as a way to understand form and how it could be perceived and interpreted.